Glee, Season 1 (2009)

If you want to be a social pariah at William McKinley High, the quickest route is to join the show choir, AKA the Glee Club.  You can be confident of a full dance card of being throw into dumpsters and/or getting a daily face-full of slushie.

Of course, some kids are already social pariahs, and there are others who find themselves willing (or coerced) to risk their social status by signing up to do ensemble covers of various show tunes, pop songs, and so forth.

And since this is a TV show, said collection of long time outcasts and former cool kids will all turn out to be uncommonly talented in one form or another, and - despite the opprobrium of the school body in general, and the vitriolic cheerleading coach in particular - they'll not just find camaraderie in the glee club, but also the chance for success.

Glee is a show that today is probably better known now for the unhappy ends of some of its stars, but back when it came out it was quite the topic of conversation, whether that be celebrating or attacking the musical performances, or celebrating or attacking the show's diversity of casting.

I personally tend to think attacks on the former are a bit naive: Yes, the show uses auto-tune.  Of course it does.  It's not reasonable to expect your cast to learn and be pitch perfect on roughly one hundred songs over the course of a season.  As for criticisms about the diversity, well, if they're of the "Glee has too many non-white, non-straight characters", then I have no time for them at all.  If they're of the "it's a shame that Glee has so many great minority characters and then invests so much of its narrative energy on the foibles of the white, heterosexual, conventionally attractive cast", well, I think that there's some merit there, especially in the first half of the season.  Still, it does slowly improve on this front as it goes along.

Glee will not appeal to all tastes.  It's a musical, for one thing, and it is certainly not afraid to rely on its comedic tone to justify some wildly improbable plot elements (as well as some pretty awful behaviour by supposedly sympathetic characters), but it's full of energy, often funny, and as well performed as I think is reasonable to expect given the production schedule.  If you're looking for an "underdogs make good" TV show, you could do a lot worse.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)

Saving the galaxy has opened up a bunch of exciting new job opportunities for Star Lord and his team, albeit mostly opportunities of the "please kill this hideous monster" variety.  Unfortunately, pursuing those opportunities has also given time for some cracks to appear in the team.  There's the awkwardness of the unspoken sexual tension between Star Lord and Gamora.  There's Rocket's continuing efforts to big note himself and keep the others at emotional arm's length by being a bit of  a jerk.  There's Star Lord's former boss and erstwhile father figure Yondu being hired to capture him. And we haven't even mentioned Gamora's homicidal sister Nebula, or the possibility of Star Lord's bio-dad suddenly showing up after 34 years of silence.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 delivers a fresh salvo of everything that made the first film such a good time: fast-paced SF action; even faster paced comedic banter; a thoroughly charming cast - both real people and CGI ones - and a stonking soundtrack of retro music hits.  It's not a flawless film, mind you.  There are a couple of scenes it drew out a little longer than I thought necessary, and it relied a bit too long on clearly secondary enemies before finally dropping the hammer on its real big bad.  But these flaws are pretty easy to overlook with a movie that's this fun and entertaining.  And on the plus side, the true villain of the piece feels a lot more significant and relevant than whatever-his-name-was* from the first film.




* I am actually enough of a comic book nerd to know that his name was Ronan the Accuser, but I'm betting the average casual MCU fan wouldn't remember, and I wouldn't blame them.

The Venture Bros., Season 1 (2004)

The conceited, pill-popping Dr Thaddeus Venture, his casually lethal bodyguard Brock Samson, and his two not-playing-with-a-full-deck sons seem pretty much incapable of not stumbling into trouble.  Whether it's the mad schemes of butterly-themed supervillain The Monarch, the cloning and kidnapping antics of theme park mogul Roy Brisby (and his trained attack panda), or just the dangers inherit in holding a yard sale when you're a mad scientist, there's pretty much always something going on at the Venture Compound.  And that "something" usually involves bodily fluids of some kind getting smeared all over places they shouldn't be.

"What happens when Jonny Quest hits middle age and it turns out he's basically a failure?" is probably not a pitch that would occur to most people, but I'm certainly glad it occurred to someone.  The Venture Bros. won't be to everyone's tastes, with its generally mean-spirited humour, scattergun pop culture references, and complete lack of delicacy regarding bodily functions, but as someone who enjoys the zany antics of Robot Chicken, it's more or less right up my alley.  It's juvenile and dumb in a decidedly smart kind of way, and I like that it generally (though by no means always) punches up, not down, targeting the wealthy and powerful to lampoon in various nasty ways.

And hey, now that I've suffered through Easy Rider, the season finale is at least 20% funnier than the first time I saw it.

Heathers (1989)

Veronica has spent a considerable amount of time and effort ingratiating herself with the "in crowd" at her high school, only to find herself missing her less "cool" but considerably nicer old friends.  The arrival of rebellious bad boy JD seems like a welcome distraction from her growing unhappiness and the resultant friction with her new crowd.

JD seems to offer Veronica a way to re-establish her own independence and identity, and a way to strike back at the "friends" that are making her miserable.  But perhaps JD's ideas of an appropriate response are a bit more extreme than Veronica's expecting ...

I loved Heathers when I first saw it as a teen, shortly after its original release, but man oh man it is very clearly a product of its time.  I'm not just talking here about the hideously 80s fashion and the frequency of character's smoking - though both are endemic throughout the film.  I'm not even talking about the problematic attitudes toward sexuality, which in the film's defense are often meant to be problematic.  I'm talking about how in one of his early scenes, JD uses a gun at school.  Yes, it's only loaded with blanks, but he does point it at two fellow students and pull the trigger.  In 1989, this was presumably meant to make him cool and edgy (since the two other students are jerks) but in 2018, I think reactions are going to be a bit different!

In fact, watching Heathers today, I was most struck by how much the changing mores of society have impacted the way I saw JD: so many of the things he does, which barely registered with me at the time, now all ping red flags.  This almost certainly harms the film for new viewers, but for someone who grew up with it, it's quite a fascinating thing to experience.

South of Nowhere, Season 1 (2005)

When the Carlin family move from small town Ohio to LA, the only one who (superficially at least) seems to make the adjustment easily is eldest son Greg.  He storms his way onto the starting basketball line-up, and snares a hot, albeit high maintenance, new girlfriend.

Meanwhile the parents are having relationship issues; adopted son Clay, who is African American, finds himself confronted with his own insulation from the experience of being black in America; and daughter Spencer is confronting the conundrum of her own sexuality, as she begins to process the fact that while she can find guys attractive, she prefers women.

Both helping and confusing Spencer in this process is new friend Ashley, a bisexual wild child with absentee parents and a habit of pulling Spencer toward her and then pushing her away.  Also of making impulsive decisions in general.

South of Nowhere attracted controversy when it came out (pun not intended, but I certainly wasn't going to delete it after I wrote it) for being a teen-oriented show that foregrounded questions of bi/homosexuality.  On the whole I think it does a decent job with the arc.  Making it about two conventionally attractive young women was probably a very conservative/safe choice, but the writers don't shy away from tackling the challenges and difficulties of teen life in general and of Spencer's journey of self-discovery in particular.

If you do choose to watch this show, be aware that the camera hops around like a ferret on amphetamines for the first 10 minutes of the opening episode, which I found quite irritating.  It stops after that, though, so if you find it as off-putting as I did, rest assured it's not an ongoing problem.

Friday the 13th: Part II (1981)

Five years ago, Pamela Voorhees went on a murderous rampage against the counselors at a local summer camp.  She was finally cut down by the last of her intended victims.  But now, a whole new group of counselors are going to learn that her death hasn't actually made these woods any less dangerous ...

So if that sounds pretty much like a direct rehash of the first Friday, well, in most ways it is.  The mystery element of the first film (such as it was) is jettisoned, but otherwise you get exactly the same thing as before: a bunch of pretty young people being offed in creative ways before the last survivor(s) have a climactic showdown with the killer.

The guy from 1000 Misspent Hours has a theory that Paramount should have made this film first, before the film to which it is a sequel.  And if I squint a bit, I can kind of see his point.  It's a technically better film in a number of ways: the potential victims have more strongly defined characters, the cinematography is stronger, and of course it is the first appearance of the killer who would define the franchise (and to some extent, slasher films in general) in Jason Voorhees.  Plus it has a Chekov's chainsaw, and that's the sort of thing I can applaud.

On the other hand - and I am sure you expected there to be an other hand - they didn't make this film first.  In fact given how hard it leans on the original in setting things up (while at the same time having some major continuity issues with that film), and how thoroughly it appropriates the plot structure and sound design of the original, it's hard to see how they could have.  Plus it's not like the Jason of this film is anything like the unstoppable masked (sometimes undead) monster in the image above.  He's much smaller, much more human in his movements, and much less physically powerful.

Ultimately, Friday the 13th, Part 2 is a competently made slasher film that launched a horror icon, and it's worth a watch if you like this kind of stuff, but it's not a film that will change your mind about the genre it helped found.  Nor does it show any desire to be the kind of film that could.

Orphan Black, Season 5 (2017)

The long struggle between the Dyad Corporation and its clone experiments comes to a head in this final series of Orphan Black, as Sarah and her "sisters" fight to bring down their creators and have the freedom to live their own lives.  The true leadership of the enemy and their motivations are finally made clear, and the clones, as well as everyone who knows their secret, must all decide on which side of the struggle they will stand.

For the first few episodes of this season, I felt like this final season of Orphan Black was going to be muddled and unsatisfying, with a lot of activity that wasn't actually changing the status quo, but as things went on it clicked together much better than I was expecting.  It's by no means perfect - right up until the last couple of episodes I felt like the wrong characters were driving the story - but it does come together quite nicely in the final act, giving centre-stage to the right people and successfully driving a theme of sisterhood.

While not immune to the common flaws of "big mystery" TV shows - the three most obvious being a sometimes meandering story, the sidelining of certain characters, and a number of twists that seem to exist purely to be twisty - Orphan Black ultimately succeeds in delivering a satisfying multi-year arc with a good conclusion.  And man oh man, Tatiana Maslany is a marvel in her multiple roles.  The show's practically worth seeing just for that.

Knight and Day (2010)

June Havens is just trying to fly home with some classic car parts when she bumps into charming stranger Roy Miller.  Literally.  Twice.  The two immediately share an attraction, and perhaps they might have exchanged phone numbers or something by the end of the flight, if it weren't for the fact that Roy is a fugitive secret agent.  June finds herself plunged into a world of crashing planes, high speed car chases, and international conspiracy.  Which would be quite enough to complicate the relationship, even if June could be sure that Roy was actually the good guy in all this ...

Knight and Day is a very light, very silly action comedy with two personable leads.  Much as I don't care for Tom Cruise, he does this kind of stuff very well, and Diaz is solid even if the script spends rather too much time having June squeal while Roy does all the action stuff.  Yeah, I know the image above shows her waving a gun around, and shes does eventually do so, but there's a lot of squealing before we get that far, trust me.

Although the theatrical release of the film does have some rather awkward transitions (there's an extended edition that may address the worst of these), overall Knight and Day is a passably entertaining bit of cinematic fluff.  It's not likely to stay with you for very long after it's over, though, so definitely save it for a time when you want the lightest of escapism.

The Americans, Season 5 (2017)

The Americans has always been about people living on the edge of disaster, but it's perhaps never felt more oppressive than it does in this, the penultimate season.  And I mean that in the best way: there's a palpable sense that the stresses of their lives, the failures of the past, and the fears of the future are ever more coming to bear on all the members of the cast, Soviet or American, "good" or "bad".

Or, as Sunsan Ivanova says in Babylon 5 ... "There's always a boom."

I've been singing the praises of this show for five seasons by now and I hope that my accolades for the taut writing, fantastic performance, and willingness to trust the audience have already born fruit and you've checked it out (all 30 or so of you who actually read this blog, anyway).  If not, then you can go back and read all the previous reviews I've done for the show and see all the nice things I've already said about it.

Or you can just take my word for it and go check it out right now.  I don't think you will be disappointed.